Catherine Saxelby's Foodwatch | Cut your food wastage – save your wallet, save the environment

Cut your food wastage – save your wallet, save the environment

Wilted vegetables, milk past its use-by date, stale bread, last weekend's leftovers - who isn't guilty of throwing uneaten food into the garbage bin? While it might not feel like much at the time, as a nation Australians waste over $5.3 billion worth of food each year, according to a survey carried out by The Australia Institute.

 

 The survey found that, each year, Australians throw out the following:

• $1.1 billion worth of fresh fruit and vegetables
• $1.1 billion of restaurant and takeaway food that was ordered and not eaten
• $872 million worth of meat and fish
• $570 million of bread, pasta and rice
• $512 million of dairy products.

The Institute says that as a nation we throw away more food, in dollar terms, than we spend on digital equipment such as flat screen TVs.

 

Food waste an environmental issue

Food waste is not only costly but an environmental disaster. Think of the energy it takes to grow, harvest, process, package, transport, store and cook all that wasted food. Worst of all, most food waste ends up as landfill and generates methane – a potent greenhouse gas. It’s been calculated that each tonne of food waste contributes the equivalent of almost one tonne of carbon dioxide.

 

Tips to help reduce food waste and increase recycling

It’s high time we started to cut food waste. All it takes is by proper planning, changing our eating habits, storing foods correctly, recycling packaging and composting food waste. Here’s what we need to do:

• To reduce the amount of food you throw away, plan meals in advance; check what you have already; buy only what you need and chill or freeze leftovers for another day.
• Compost your food scraps or use a worm farm. Compact systems for apartments (such as Bokashi buckets and small worm farms) are widely available.
• Home-grown vegetables and herbs need no packaging, are fun to grow and good to eat. Grow herbs in pots on a balcony, or start a vegetable patch in the back garden.
• Join a community garden. Contact your local council if more community gardens are needed in your area. Schools can get involved with Stephanie Alexander’s Kitchen Garden project.
• Select foods with minimal packaging. Buy foods such as rice, pasta, legumes, oats and nuts in bulk and save money too.
• Get into recycling  – have separate kitchen bins for bottles/cans, paper/cardboard and green waste depending on what your local council collects.
• Buy a re-usable drink bottle to carry water with you. If you don’t like the taste of your tap water, invest in an inexpensive filter jug to remove impurities and off-tastes.
• Eat foods in season – that’s when they’re cheapest and at their peak nutritionally.

 

 What you can compost

Vegetable peels and trimmings, wilted vegetables and herbs, fruit peels,  prepared foods, cooked and uncooked meats and fish, egg shells, bread, coffee grinds, tea leaves and wilted flowers.

I feed our birds nest ferns in the garden all vegetable trimmings and fruit scraps (as long as there's no seeds) along with the more usual banana peels. They thrive on it all!

 

For more information visit:

• www.foodwise.com.au set up by John Dee, founder of Planet Ark
• www.lovefoodhatewaste.com (established by Woolworth’s Supermarkets)
• www.acfonline.org.au from the Australian Conservation Foundation

 

Rescuing still-good food

Edible, unwanted food, including restaurant leftovers, is often “rescued” these days to feed the hungry by organisations such as Foodbank and Ozharvest:

• www.ozharvest.org "rescues" 15 tonnes of good food each week to give to people who don't have enough to eat.
• www.foodbank.com.au acts as a "conduit" between food manufacturers and retailers to supply unused food to over 2200 welfare agencies across Australia.

 

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Healthy recipes to use up odds and ends in your fridge (and so PREVENT waste):

• My fav Tropical fruit salad - tastes great made with any sort of leftover or partly-bad fruit - just trim away to overripe bits and dice the rest.
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• No-fuss salmon, vegetable and macaroni toss - add any vegetables you have on hand, a bottom-of-the-fridge easy recipe.
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